cǎi
verb HSK 7-9 #6,201

Meanings

  1. 1 to pick; to pluck; to gather
  2. 2 to collect; to select
  3. 3 to extract; to mine

Examples

Háizi men zài cǎi huā.
The children are picking flowers.
Jìzhě qù cǎifǎng le.
The reporter went to do an interview.
Wǒmen cǎiyòng le xīn fāngfǎ.
We adopted a new method.

Tips

usage
is used in: 采访 (interview), 采用 (adopt/use), 采取 (take measures), 采购 (purchase/procure), 采集 (collect/gather), 开采 (mine/extract).

Components

semantic
zhǎo
claw on top (radical-variant of 爪)
Top claw component — the top-position form of , depicting a hand reaching down to grasp. In oracle-bone this is exactly the picture: a hand poised above a tree, fingers descending to pluck fruit. The claw-on-top form appears in to receive, to love, to climb.
semantic
tree (semantic)
Bottom tree — the object being picked from. Hand above + tree below = picking fruit or leaves: one of the script's clearest ideographic compounds. Note that is itself Kangxi radical #165, but the modern entry decomposes naturally because the hand-and-tree imagery is the entire reason the character exists.

Filed under radical (biàn, #165) by convention. is not a separate component in , so no strokes are highlighted.

Stroke Order

cǎi